The case of a Minnesota woman accused of setting fires on a college campus last month in a self-professed act of jihad raises questions about whether law enforcement could have done more to stop her.More >>

The case of a Minnesota woman accused of setting fires on a college campus last month in a self-professed act of jihad raises questions about whether law enforcement could have done more to stop her.More >>

Students with their whole lives ahead of them and the teachers who tried to protect them were among the 17 people killed when a gunman opened fire with an AR-15 at a large high school in south Florida.More >>

Students with their whole lives ahead of them and the teachers who tried to protect them were among the 17 people killed when a gunman opened fire with an AR-15 at a large high school in south Florida.More >>

The mass shooting at a Florida high school that left 17 people dead has sparked calls for walkouts, sit-ins and other actions on school campuses nationwide aimed at pushing lawmakers to pass tougher gun laws.More >>

The mass shooting at a Florida high school that left 17 people dead has sparked calls for walkouts, sit-ins and other actions on school campuses nationwide aimed at pushing lawmakers to pass tougher gun laws.More >>

Florida Gov. Rick Scott is vowing to do what he can to keep mentally ill people from getting guns. Attorney General Jeff Sessions also is focusing on intervening with mentally ill people before school shootings happen.

Florida Gov. Rick Scott is vowing to do what he can to keep mentally ill people from getting guns. Attorney General Jeff Sessions also is focusing on intervening with mentally ill people before school shootings happen.

WASHINGTON (AP) - Former Attorney General Eric Holder said Wednesday that former President Barack Obama, though a personal friend, understood while in office that "there has to be a wall between the White House and the Justice Department."

Holder said that he wished President Donald Trump, who has repeatedly blasted the Justice Department and his attorney general, Jeff Sessions, would treat the department with the same respect and independence as Obama did in office.

"There were things that I did while I was attorney general, decisions that I had to make, that were not communicated to him," Holder said at a breakfast meeting with reporters sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor. "My guess is there were more than a couple that he probably did not agree with, and yet I never heard from him anything either privately - and certainly not publicly - that was critical of any decision that I made."

Holder, who served as attorney general between 2009 and 2015, said that he did not think the drumbeat of criticism of the FBI and Justice Department would affect an ongoing investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller into potential coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia.

But, he said, it could have other negative long-term consequences on the public perception of the FBI and Justice Department.

"A case will be tried in Illinois, Mississippi, Missouri, where a credibility determination has to be made between an FBI agent saying one thing and a defendant, a witness, saying something else," Holder said. "And having raised questions in the way that the president has about the way in which the FBI goes about doing its job ... will raise doubts in the minds of people as they listen to that FBI agent and what she says in a way that never existed before."

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